He could be here. I always think that when I arrive at a residency, looking around for a youngish middle-aged man, maybe round glasses and an earring, battered leather jacket and jeans, Geoff’s standard college outfit. I’m guessing it might have been his adult one as well, at least some of the time. He could be a visual artist or sculptor, I think, perhaps a curator or an art historian—maybe a writer, he was so good at that too.
And sometimes I find him---as I did in this session at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I didn’t put it all together at first—that is often the way of these vivid synchronicities.
I’d noticed this elegantly handsome man right away when I’d arrived, but since I’d never landed at his dinner table, the place where more intimate connections happen, I didn’t know his name. Maybe a week after I’d gotten here, he had an open studio in the afternoon, at 4:30, I didn’t go as I usually always do, was having tough going on a poem I’d been working on and felt I needed to stay in my studio and struggle with it.
I saw him at breakfast the next morning and apologized for not coming. People had said his work was astounding and I was hopeful I could still see it. “Come over right after breakfast,” he said, “after that I’ll be taking it down as I leave tomorrow.”
So, I had an intimate, one-on-one experience of seeing this man’s art, the man whose name I now knew was Jeff. For an hour I took in dismembered books, their pages and bindings reassembled into brilliant collages, paper pulp creating paper he’d used to paint daily portraits while here, a whole wall of dedication pages in books he’d scavenged for the projects.
I listened to him describe his process, the forces that drove him to create.
My paintings and installations are constructions that amplify the relationship between time and memory…With this medium, I am interested in preserving the ‘what was’ and in elevating the ‘as is’ to represent what remains present in memory with the passing of time—
Time and memory. What was, what is. This gentle, talented man, whose name was Jeff.
I told him then of how my son Geoff had been a history of art major spending his junior year abroad in Rome, how he’d fallen fifty feet off the wall by the Tiber, a branch in his hand, the night before his last exam. How I’d started writing poems after he died, trying to transform my anguish into something outside myself
Jeff’s eyes were so kind as he listened. I’m not sure either of us yet fully grasped the connective tissue that bound us and our work together, but we shared a warm hug before I walked back to my studio.
Just before leaving for Virginia, I’d grabbed a manila envelope of sympathy cards and letters from the top of a big basket, untouched in my study at home for the thirty-five years since Geoff’s death. From his friends, our friends, teachers, family, patients and clients, they now were emotional fire and smoke in the corner of my studio couch. I’d thought I might find the courage to dive into the raw grief of those early days after his death at this residency, perhaps discover inspiration in them for a poem or prose piece.
But I hadn’t touched them yet.
As soon as I got back, I pulled one out. Suddenly, thoughts and feelings began cascading. I grabbed one of my yellow pads, a pen, and started to write.
“Geoff could be Jeff,” I began.
I sifted through more of the cards and letters, looking for phrases that felt especially resonant, totally in the “zone’ now.
He showed me how to draw stars in Mrs. Fritz’s class.
He was so easy to love and always there with his love when we needed him.
Geoff was the kind of student who made teaching easy.
I wrote and wrote.
We were not meant to outlive our children.
My heart reaches out to you at this terrible time.
There are hundreds of us sharing your despair.
I titled the poem After Jeff. Time and memory coalesced in twenty-two lines.
I gave a reading last week, After Jeff towards the end. The room pulsated with silence when I finished. Then people began to speak, later coming up to me with their connected stories and shared tears.
“Geoff is here right now,” I said. “I can feel his presence, how his spirit is reaching out to all of you. Look at the link between Jeff’s art, how it became an amazing framework for my experience—that synchronicity. And with all of you, your responsiveness. This is one of the reasons I write, to keep that spirit alive.”
My friend Martha calls it cross-pollination.
We are poets, memoirists, novelists, playwrights, composers, visual and mixed media artists here in this softer, kinder world, a creative tribe daily inspired by each other’s work.
It's going to be hard to come home.
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Here’s some more information about Jeff Wallace and his art: http://www.jeffwallacenyc.com/about-jmw-2
For those of you who will ask to see the poem, I have not included it because I would like to submit it for possible publication and if it’s been published anywhere, even in a blog post, it’s not eligible.
And Junie was thrilled by all the many responses to her poem in my last blog post. Thanks for those.